Darwin, Marx, Freud & Buddha – Ep 56

March 4, 2016 Robert Thurman

In this podcast Professor Thurman discusses how the ideas of Darwin, Marx and Freud, although brilliant, are based on a rather despondent bottom line assessment: that we as humans are a bunch of helpless robots. But is it true that we can never understand our unconscious? Are we helpless victims of our genes? Are we the victims of our social settings? By contrast, Buddhist ideas incite human beings to take responsibility for their own minds by fully understanding the inter-relatedness in the world, which in turn produces a natural ethical behavior.

Professor Thurman then engages his listeners into an interesting discussion of whether there is evidence or lack thereof for former and future lives.

Infinite Life demonstrates that our every action has infinite consequences for ourselves and others, here and now and after we are gone. He introduces the Seven Paths to reconstructing body and mind carefully in order …